I first heard of the Virginia Tech massacre about two hours after the actual shooting took place while doing some work on the internet. My first response was, "Whoa! We've got a church there!"
GCM does have a church at Virginia Tech (VT), one of our biggest, and one of the biggest on campus. There are well over 1,000 students that are a part of the New Life Christian Fellowship [nlcf] in one form or another - about 1 in 25 VT students.
This video is an excerpt from the Larry King Live tv show the evening of the shootings. It includes a brief conversation between Larry King and Jim Pace, a GCM staffer and one of the Pastors of [nlcf].
My first thought, unfortunately, became reality when a couple days later we learned that three of the 32 people killed had in fact been a part of the [nlcf] church:
In addition to these three, there are reported connections with 8 of the other victims and two of the survivors. Many lost boy/girl friends, teachers, co-workers, room mates, dorm mates and class mates.
I just got the following email from my supervisor, GCM's Director of Campus Ministries, Greg Van Nada:
"Our pastor and staff team are running on empty and are overwhelmed. They are laying down their lives for the Lord’s sheep and those not yet of His flock. They just need someone to be there for them. I plan on canceling my trip to Colorado at the end of next week but still am not sure if I will be at the [Pastor's] retreat [next week]. I made myself available to Jim [Pace] and their student leaders for as soon as he tells me when they need me. Please pray that his team has wisdom to know what is best. Right now they have a guy from Columbine coming to help. Jim is going to see if that meets the immediate need and if so, have me come later in the week or, if not, to have me come earlier in the week."
As you can see, there's still a tremendous amount of work to be done, and the Pastors, Staff, and students of [nlcf] are doing their best to represent the love and concern of Jesus Christ to these hurting students, faculty, and families.
Please keep them regularly in your prayers!
-Dave
Here's the first of our family updates. Our littlest girl, Serena, just 2 days shy of her 9-month birthday, started pulling herself up all by herself! The thing is, she's not even crawling yet! This video is actually of her second success, just moments after the first (we didn't have the video camera ready to capture the whole event).
This is our first blog - ever! Our hope is to use this as a dynamic way to keep our friends and family more up to date on the goings-on in the Schubert Family.
As time goes on, you'll see a combination of family and ministry related updates, as well as the occasional musing or deep thought. We're used to providing ministry and family updates about every other month through our "Ministry Update" news letter; something we'll continue to do. However, now we have a means to create more of a "living" news letter as well!
Up until now, the flow of updates have been one-sided - us sending the news letters out to you. It's fine, but it really doesn't provide a true connection with you. Our hope is that you, our friends and family, will now be able to "close the loop" and provide comment on the things we tell you about in this blog.
Our understanding is that you can even set it up so that you receive an email every time a new post is made. Pretty cool!
We'll, we're looking forward to the opportunity this blog will allow for greater connection with all of you!
-Dave & Collette
